ATHLETES AND CRIME Incidents show the ugly side of sports

But there is still plenty to celebrate in the sports world.
By STEVE WILSTEIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
EAGLE, Colo. -- Crime and sports shouldn't mix as often as they do.
A hot day in the Rockies began with prosecutors meeting for more than an hour with the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case.
In Waco, Texas, rain held up a search of gravel pits, a river bank and other sites for the body of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, two days after his former teammate was charged with murder.
The sports scene is a squalid place sometimes, fouled by the same villainy we go to games to forget.
Like any other day, Wednesday had much to celebrate.
In France, Tyler Hamilton stole the spotlight, though not the lead, from Lance Armstrong. Undaunted by the pain of a double-fractured collarbone, the 32-year-old Hamilton broke away to win his first ever stage in cycling's premier race.
In Connecticut, teaching pro golfer Suzy Whaley drew the largest galleries at a rain-shortened pro-am as she prepared to chase history -- the first woman to compete in the Greater Hartford Open.
Baseball brightened this midsummer day with its own offerings.
Bad side
Yet the noxious side of sports kept intruding.
Here in the Rocky Mountains, grim prosecutors did their due diligence in the case against Bryant, speaking with the 19-year-old alleged victim at length at her lawyer's office and interviewing several other young women at the district attorney's office.
So much about this case is unsettling, none of it more so than her name, address and telephone number appearing on the Internet and a radio talk-show host, based in Los Angeles and heard on 60 stations across the country, using her name on the air. Photos on the Internet purporting to be the woman were of someone else who has become victimized in her own right.
A close friend of the woman, who claims she was assaulted by Bryant at a resort three weeks ago, says she's strong enough to withstand the attacks against her character that have cropped up in recent days.
"She's one of the toughest people I know," said Luke Bray, a 21-year-old construction worker.
Bray said he, too, was skeptical of her story about Bryant when it first came out but became convinced she was telling the truth when they spoke at his house. The details that rushed out of her, the anger in her voice, her "visible" injuries and the way she reacted when Bryant went on television to claim his innocence made Bray believe in her.
"She's one of the most trustworthy people I know," said Bray, whose wife has known her since second grade.
Trust issues
It's hard to know whom to trust and whom to believe in sensational cases that challenge our views of public figures. We think we know athletes by the way they perform or present themselves, but the truth is far different. Even those of us who interview them regularly, seeing them literally stripped naked in locker rooms and figuratively exposed in triumph and defeat, are often deceived.
We thought we knew Kirby Puckett until he was accused of dragging a woman into the men's room of a restaurant, forcing her into a stall and grabbing her breast hard enough to leave a bruise. He was acquitted by a jury in April of false imprisonment, criminal sexual conduct and assault, but our views of him will never be quite the same.
Jayson Williams, the former star for the New Jersey Nets, still awaits trial in the shooting death of a limousine driver at his mansion in Alexandria Township, N.J., in 2002. Williams faces nearly 55 years in prison if convicted on all charges, the most serious of which is aggravated manslaughter. Is this the same Williams we imagined was smart and smooth and full of joy?
Too many questions
We see a man like Rae Carruth and wonder what twisted path took him from a star receiver for the Carolina Panthers to a murder conspiracy conviction for the January 2001 shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend in Charlotte, N.C. He is serving a sentence of at least 18 years, 11 months.
We may always wonder about O.J. Simpson, that most affable and successful of football players, who was acquitted of murder after the 1994 slayings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, but found liable in a civil jury.
And we may never figure out Mike Tyson, who still can't stay out of trouble, even after serving more than three years in an Indiana prison after being convicted in 1992 of rape and other charges.
Cases like those teach us never to be surprised at what even the most celebrated athletes might do or might be accused of doing. The police blotter leaks onto the sports pages day after day, leaving indelible stains and broken hearts.